Goodbye summer, hello fall

Looking back & looking ahead

[Jump to this week’s song on repeat.]

Yesterday was officially the first day of fall and so it was fitting that I dropped my friends off at the airport and said goodbye to the last of our summer visitors. Between all the work we got done on the house and all the guests we hosted (plus an unplanned trip back to Wisconsin), it’s been a whirlwind in the best way. I’m sad we don’t have anyone else on the books in the near term, but I’m also looking forward to figuring out our fall routine.

Everyone keeps saying it’s beautiful now, but just wait until winter. I’m curious how bad it’ll really be. Part of me just can’t believe it’ll be worse than Wisconsin winters and polar vortexes. If my eyeballs and nose hairs don’t freeze every time I leave the house, I’ll call it an improvement. I guess we’ll find out. We woke up to a gray, drizzly day this morning but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the sunny days quite yet. The sun’s already peeking back out in fact.

But I’ll always take the chance to do a little reflecting and list making, so I thought it’d be a good time to look back at my summer bucket list. I knew it was an ambitious list, and I didn’t do everything I wanted to but I’m still happy with how things turned out.

Guiding ideas

I was in a real rut in SLC. These ideas were all about breaking up my solitary routine and figuring out what it meant to be part of a community again. I haven’t totally cracked that nut so I’m going to keep these in sight going into fall.

• Get back to being in the world.

• Be flexible in my routine.

• Take off the wfh blinders.

• Get involved. Be a local.

Done

1. See the northern lights. This may technically have been in spring but I’m counting it.

2. Find my yoga home base. Bonus: I started teaching again too, which was something I thought I’d closed the book on.

3. Make a few friends (or at least prospects). I’m still in the “prospects” phase, but there have been some promising developments.

4. Take an art class. Fudging on dates (it starts Wednesday), but I signed up a month ago.

5. Get down to Seattle. Right under the wire! Picked my friends up from SEA-TAC last week and spent the afternoon down there.

6. Make art and / or write every day. Very happy about this one! I didn’t post everything I made or wrote, but that wasn’t the point. The point was the making. And it helps that I started a fresh round of 100 days the other week.

7. Meditate every day. Maybe not every day, but 90% is still a passing grade.

8. Try a new sport. I started taking tennis lessons and one of Ben’s friends introduced me to pickleball when he stayed with us.

9. Have an exciting beast sighting. I was really hoping this would be a whale, but no dice. A couple of bucks were locking antlers in our backyard the other night though, and I saw a few purple starfish this weekend. Whales will be next year.

10. If someone invites us somewhere, go. We didn’t say yes to every invitation, but we said yes to most!

11. Find the deep cut, locals-only restaurants. This will be a continuous effort but we have a handful of regular spots.

12. Experience 1 new thing in Bellingham for each of the 14 weeks of summer. Honestly…this might belong in the “Needs improvement” category bc I didn’t track things very well. But we did a lot of exploring.

Needs improvement

1. Find my hikes. We found some good overlooks but my hike game is weak.

2. Start to learn local politics, the local figures, the local feuds. Another ongoing effort but we voted in our first primary. It’s all vote by mail here. Amazing!

3. Talk to a stranger every time I leave the house. I’m slowly remembering how to do small talk. When Ben’s parents visited I really admired how easily and effortlessly they seemed to strike up conversation wherever they went.

4. Literally explore our backyard. We cleared a lot of overgrowth (gardening is really hard work, did you know?) and we’ve decided next summer is the year we figure out what we really have going on in the backyard.

Still to do:

We didn’t do much traveling this summer, as expected. My guess is we won’t really go anywhere until spring or summer, but I’m moving those things (tentatively) to the fall bucket list, along with the rest of the things I didn’t get to yet.

1. Get over to the nearby islands.

2. Explore the parks. Olympic / Hoh / Rainier / Cascades / Glacier.

3. Take the ferry to Alaska.

4. Go to Canada. Vancouver / Squamish / the Sunshine Coast / Vancouver Island.

5. Find a writing group.

6. Start a club.

7. Find somewhere to volunteer.

8. Jump in big body of water.

9. Get in a kayak and / or SUP.

10. Learn some local history. Go to the history museums, the galleries, the gardens, the parks, the arboretum.

11. Geocaching. Didn’t do and my interest has waned, striking from the list.

12. New: Learn some local lore, myth, etc.

13. New: Have some ~new~ friends over for dinner.

14. New: Build my list of spots (book stores, thrift stores, tailors, hidden gems, etc. answers to the question “where do you go for XYZ?”).

15. New: Go to a show at one of the local music venues.

16. New: Try a new movement practice.

Fall is my favorite season. The colors, the smell, the cooler temps. The general sense of winding down, slowing down. Soups and stews. Blankets. Cozy fires. I know I likely won’t get to all of these things, but I also know that I have an alarming tendency to hunker down and not leave the house, so it’s good to have some external incentive to get out and do things.

Do you have any favorite fall routines or things you’re planning on doing? Fill me in!

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This week’s song on repeat

This whole album’s been on repeat, tbh. Find the whole playlist here.

I'm a waste of a woman, but I taste like success
I keep all of my sugar where I know you like it best